Seeking for the help of the Lord,
I direct your prayerful attention to Genesis 15, and reading for
our text, verses 24 and 25. It is just the words, God will
surely visit you, that is, upon my spirit. You'll read both verses,
and you'll find in both of the verses those words, God will
surely visit you. Verse 24, And Joseph said unto
his brethren, I die, and God will surely visit you, and bring
you out of this land unto the land which he swore to Abraham,
to Isaac, and to Jacob. And Joseph took an oath of the
children of Israel, saying, God will surely visit you, and ye
shall carry up my bones from hens. We read in this last chapter
a covering over no doubt many, many years. But Joseph had not
forgotten what had been told him from his fathers Abraham,
Isaac and Jacob. And here he is reminding his
children and the generations to come of what God had promised
them and putting them in remembrance of it in a very, you might say,
a unique way. Because with Jacob, they brought
him back to Canaan and he was buried there. But with Joseph,
and it must have been for some perhaps 150 years, maybe not
that long, that they had his coffin with them and a reminder
that one day they would be brought out of Egypt. And Joseph is speaking of this
in these terms, God will surely visit you. Now it might seem
a strange way of setting something forth when it's in reference
to God. If we were to say of a person,
and we can only be in one place at one time, but if we said to someone that
was going away and going to live in another place, and we said
that we are surely going to visit you. So what that would mean,
we would literally travel and go and see that person. And there'd
be a distinct time that we were with them, we saw them, we spoke
to them, and our presence would be with them, we'd be visiting
them. And then we'd go away and that visit would end. But with God, God is everywhere. He's present everywhere. And
yet still in the Word of God, it speaks about God visiting
His people. So there's something different
than His presence with them. We know with the promise of two
or three gathered together in His name, there am I in the midst. He is there. But it's not in
the words spoken of as the same way as visiting. And what it's
joined with is that God is doing something. He's going to bring
something about. He's going to accomplish something.
And that's what's spoken of as a visit from the Lord. And it doesn't happen all the
time. There are times that, as it were,
the Lord is not visiting in that way. But there are times that
he is. And it's good for us to remember
that. Those two things, one, that the
Lord is everywhere. He is in our assembly this evening. But when he visits, it is in
a special way to bless and to do something putting his power
forth and in this case what Joseph is speaking about is to bring
them up out of Egypt. Well I want to look firstly at
these dying words of Joseph and that they were fulfilled and
then secondly the coming of our Lord as also a visitation from
God and then the Lord visiting his people in a gospel way today. In one sense we have been seeing
about it in the heavens. But firstly Joseph's dying words and he took a promise or took
an oath of the children of Israel, made them promise that they would
do this. God will surely visit you and
you shall carry up my bones from hence. The faith that dear Joseph
had, the certainty that he knew, and remember this is being spoken
of by the one by whose means they'd come into Egypt. Sometimes it can be a great difficulty
with people if someone, say a father or grandfather, has said, do
this, or say if they have moved us into a particular place and
we're living in that place and then that person dies and the
other generations they see by providence and they feel it's
the right thing to move. Someone objects, and they say,
yes, but our father, our grandfather moved us here. I don't want to
move from this place because they brought us here. And sometimes
we have it where maybe a pastor has been over a people, he's
died, and then years later the church is trying to make decisions
of, oh no, no, Mr. Souto would have done this. And
we mustn't go against his word. And that poor man's been dead
for 40 years, but still he's having a say in the church when
the circumstances are very different altogether. And yet here, Joseph
is making really sure that the generations after know that the
person who God used to bring them into Egypt is speaking about
and surely telling them they will go out of Egypt. And that alone was worth a lot
to that people, a great assurance that it was the Lord's Bill what
they would do. Why, he gives them to know that
it was the word of the Lord to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. Indeed it was. Abraham had been
told And even before Isaac was born, that his seed would be
a stranger in a strange land. They shall afflict them 400 years,
and in the fourth generation they shall come hither again. So he had been told that, and
no doubt passed it on to those succeeding generations. So did
it come to pass? Of course, we follow then to
the next book from Genesis, which is named Exodus. They're coming
out, exiting that land. And we need to wait until we
get to the 13th chapter and we read of them coming out. But
a lot happened before they were brought out. Moses was born. Moses trained up in Pharaoh's
household, and then in the desert, and the afflictions that God
had spoken about to Abraham, they came to pass. And then,
when the time drew nigh, the nine great plagues that Egypt
knew, before the Passover was observed, now brought out with
a strong hand. Well, in Exodus 13 and verse
19, we read of them coming out, and God leading the people through
the way of the wilderness by the Red Sea, went up hardness
out of the land of Egypt. Then we read this in verse 19,
Moses took the bones of Joseph with him, for he had straightly
sworn the children of Israel, saying, God will surely visit
you, and ye shall carry up my bones away hence with you. And of course those in this generation
carrying his bones away in the coffin that we'd been put into,
they wouldn't have been those that had heard Joseph saying
this. Very doubtful that there'd been
those that were living that long lived at that time. But again,
that had been passed down. The promise was just as effectual. The word was just as sure. The
promise that they had promised Joseph was carried on from one
generation to another generation when it was to be brought about
and it came to pass. So this then was what Joseph
refers to as God visiting them. God hearing their cries in Egypt. God sending to deliver them and
to save them. The picture of the children of
Israel being set free from Egypt is spoken of as the Lord visiting
his people. In a spiritual way, it is like
the Lord visiting His people and separating them from the
Egypt of this world, from the things of this world and bringing
them to be a people for Himself and to serve Him and to receive
His laws and to walk in His ways. Truly it is the Lord's visit
upon a people to pass by them when they are in their blood
and bid them live, to quicken them into life, to cause that
they are born again of His Spirit, to be blessed with His grace,
to begin a good work in them, is a visit from the Lord. It is a distinctive work of God. God's work to give that eternal
life is God's work to quicken and to separate from this world. Come ye out from among them,
touch not the unclean thing, and I will receive you. You shall
be my sons and my daughters. Now, this was not the only time
that the children of Israel had been told that God would visit
them. Later, when they were in the
promised land, then they went into many paths of sin and wickedness. God warned them through his prophets
that he will visit them for their transgressions. In Jeremiah 23,
we read, Behold, I will visit upon you the evil of your doings,
saith the Lord. We have a picture of the Lord
looking at the evil doings of Israel, and really, not just
once, but many times, he warned them over many generations that
their ways were sinful, and that he would punish them, that he
would send them out of that land, that he'd bring them into Babylon,
and that he would accomplish 70 years in Babylon. And in due
time, the Lord did visit upon the children of Israel what he
said he would do. So in that sense, the Lord visiting
them was in destroying the temple, breaking down the walls of Jerusalem,
and bringing them into captivity. And it was chastisement for their
sins. Then even when they were in Babylonian
captivity, Then we have another word as well in Jeremiah, promising
that the Lord would visit in another way in bringing them
out. And he says at the end of chapter
27, they shall be carried to Babylon and there shall they
be until the day that I visit them, saith the Lord. Will I
bring them up and restore them to this place? He had told that
there was a set time. We read of Daniel understanding
by books that the time was nearing to come about and he set himself
to prayer and supplication. There is a set time to favour
Zion. There's a time to be chastened. There's a time to have that chastening
hand removed. There's a time to kill and a
time to make alive. Those times are when the Lord
visits, visits his people. So the children of Israel, not
only the visit of God to bring them out of Egypt to form them
into a nation, but also to bring them out of Babylon again to
restore them until the time that our Lord and Saviour came. So we have then the Lord visiting
his people in the leader to the coming of our Lord. I want to look then in the second
place, the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. In the Gospel according
to Luke, one of the two Gospels that speaks of the Lord's coming
There's many references to the Lord visiting his people. In the first chapter, verse 68,
we read of Zacharias, the father of John Baptist, and he's saying,
blessed be the Lord God of Israel, for he hath visited and redeemed
his people and hath raised up an horn of salvation for us in
the house of his servant David, as he spake by the mouth of his
holy prophets, which have been since the world began." And so
he is realizing that the Messiah that had been promised, the seed
of the woman to bruise the serpent's head, had been spoken of right
from the beginning of the world, and here He is saying now that
John Baptist has been born and the coming of the Lord Jesus
Christ, that this is the time, after all those years, from the
beginning of the world, 4,000 years, now the Lord is visiting
His people and He's sending forth His Son. And so we read also,
he adds at the end of that praise of God, he says, through the
tender mercy of our God, whereby the day spring from on high hath
visited us, or the sun rising from on high, to give light to
them that sit in darkness and in the shadow of death, to guide
our feet into the way of peace, the coming of our Lord for that
purpose and in that way. And then later on in chapter
7 and verse 16, we read when the Lord was working miracles
and raising from the dead the widow of Nain's son, then There
is fear on all. They glorify God saying that
a great prophet is risen up among us and that God has visited his
people. And they are recognizing that
the Lord is doing great things then, that he is visiting his
people like he had in the time past. they're speaking of this. The Lord's coming was indeed
a great visitation, that which had been the hopes and fears
of all the years, the expectation of the people of God that the
Lord would come. And yet the Lord reproved his
own people because they knew not the day of their visitation. Many, the chief rulers, the religious
rulers, they did not recognize the day that the Lord had visited
them. What a warning that is to us. You think of such a great fulfilling
of Scripture, a great visitation from God, that which even the
people recognized as they saw His miracles, and yet the religious
leaders of the day They knew not the day of their visitation.
They didn't realize that this was what had been foretold. They
were looking for another, some still looking for another. So
the coming of our Lord was at that rate. visitation. In the psalms there is a beautiful
psalm that speaks and is a prayer. Many of the psalms are prayers
looking forward to the coming of our Lord. In Psalm 80 we have
a prayer, return we beseech thee O God of hosts look down from
heaven Behold and visit this vine, and the vineyard which
thy right hand hath planted, and the branch that thou made
as strong for thyself. It's speaking of Israel, it's
speaking of the people of God, that God had made strong to bring
forth his beloved Son through that nation. There's a beautiful
prayer in the 17th verse of that Psalm 80. And of course that
man at God's right hand is the Lord Jesus Christ. And when we
have sinned and we have merited the wrath of God, it's a very
bold plea. to plea that God would punish
his beloved son instead of us. Let thy hand be upon the man
at thy right hand, upon the son of man, whom thou madeest strong
for thyself. But then I want to speak of the
Lord visiting his people in a gospel day. We sang in our second hymn
of Pentecost And that day which the Lord had said that they had
to tarry at Jerusalem until they be endued with power from on
high, the Pentecost, 50 days after our Lord was crucified,
going back to the types, it's 50 days after the Passover, when
they were brought out of Egypt, 50 days brought them to Mount
Sinai. And that is where the law was
given, but here is when the Holy Spirit is given. We have the
two covenants, the covenant of the law, the broken law but restored
law in Christ, and we have the giving of the Holy Spirit, the
power of God, unto salvation. And from the time that our Lord
was crucified, rose again, ascended into heaven, that was 40 days,
and 10 days later, that day of Pentecost. And it is, again,
a visitation from the Lord in the New Testament that is recognized
as so, and it's also spoken of when 10 years later, Peter was
called to go to the Gentiles. And when he was held to account,
then Peter rehearsed to them what had been done. and they
were able to speak of those things that had been done amongst the
Gentiles. We read in Acts 15, Simeon or
Simon Peter hath declared how God at the first did visit the
Gentiles to take out of them a people for his name. And to this agree the words of
the prophets as it is written, and he speaks of the Gentiles,
that the residue of men might seek after the Lord, and all
the Gentiles, upon whom my name is called, saith the Lord, who
doeth all these things. Now it was a distinctive time,
Pentecost was, and the Gentiles, a time chosen and appointed by
God. You have the angel appearing
to Cornelius, and then the vision given to Peter, making him willing
to go, and the Holy Spirit falling upon the Gentiles and blessing
them in the same way as he did to the Jews. And so in a Gospel
day, those two times, so vital in the preaching of the Gospel,
so vital in the spreading forth of the Word of God, is the gift
of the Holy Spirit, the visiting of the Holy Spirit. And so that
then is what was needed before they preached, before the Word
was effectual. Paul says to the Thessalonians
that the Word came not unto them in word only, but in demonstration
of the Spirit and of power. And that is what we expect and
long for and pray for under the preaching of the Word. As we
said before, God is present in the assemblies of the saints.
But there are those special times when he visits his people and
when he blesses them. In Psalm 106 we have a beautiful
prayer, O visit me with thy salvation. And it is those visits of the
Lord that bring the blessings that he has promised. those times
that the word is effectual to the promised end. My word shall
not return unto me void, it shall accomplish the thing whereto
I sent it. It is good to remember this. God is always first in salvation. We are not to be fatalistic if
we truly know the worth of our souls, if we know that we are
under the law and therefore are under condemnation, it will cause
us great concern to continue to go on without a visit from
the Lord, without His blessing, without faith, without a new
heart, without a new birth. And that must then cause us a
concern to pray that the Lord would do it, like with Daniel,
set himself to pray that the Lord would deliver them, deliver
them out of Babylonish captivity. And if we are at all mindful
of the state and condition that we are in, then our prayer should
be, O visit me with thy salvation, that there might come a time
that, instead of passing us by and blessing another and favouring
another, that it might be us. Many of us have witnessed those
that have been converted, those in our assemblies, whether here
or at Lambethurst or at other causes of truth. We've known
people and the Lord has worked a change in their hearts. You
may have heard from their lips what has happened and how he
has blessed them, how he's brought them into concern. how He's brought
them to desire to walk in His ways, how they have done and
numbered amongst the professed Church of God. And to have that
desire, Lord, visit me with Thy salvation. Visit me with that
same power. And we spoke this morning of
the path and the way that the Lord has ordained for His people
to pray is not just to pray, but it is ask, and seek, and
knock. It is those that, in all that
they do, they're bearing that witness, and God sees it, that
the desire of that soul is that they might truly be blessed. Oh, that thou wouldst bless me
indeed, says Jabez. One of the hymn writers says,
may all my prayer and praise suggest come and dwell within
my breast. But that said, it's a good thing
for us to remember, especially when we get faint or discouraged,
or perhaps tempted and feel, well, actually, it is because
we are not seeking right, we are not praying right, And perhaps
the devil will send you like Bunyan portrays his pilgrim was
sent to Sinai to see if he could get some relief there. And Bunyan,
he does really emphasize this, that what his pilgrim felt was
a burden upon his back, the sin that he had. And he was willing
really to try anything to get rid of it, to get free of it. even to follow with false teachers,
and we said back to the Lord. But the Lord hedged him about,
so he's brought at last to the cross. And we need the Lord to
visit our souls. There is a set time to favour
Zion, and He said that set time is come. And many, many of us,
and really it should be all, in the Church of God can point
to those times when the Lord has visited our souls. And those times of blessing,
times when He has softened our hearts, time when He has drawn
us to Himself, times when He's made the Word very exceedingly
precious unto you which believe He is precious. And those times
when we felt real love to the brethren, And we know that we
are passed from death unto life because we love the brethren.
And again, that is not something that we may say we love the brethren. We do love them. Yet those times
when that love is shed abroad in our hearts, the same as to
God, it can be to the brethren as well. Well, remember that
time returning from a prayer meeting at Clifton years ago
on the M1. And it came over me, oh how I
loved the brethren. And it said, Lord, so soften
my heart. I shed buckets of tears trying
to drive through them down the M1. And we'd just been meeting
with many of the ministers of our denomination there in prayer.
And it's a lovely thing to have that suddenly come over you,
suddenly feel that love to the Lord's people. And it doesn't
abide in that way, it doesn't remain, but you never forget
it. And there are those times that
you can say, these blessings, these softenings, these drawings,
these times that are remembered, they are visits from the Lord. Sometimes I think of what was
said of Samson, that the Spirit of the Lord began to move him
at times. in the camp of Dan, and many
of the Lord's people know those little visits from the Lord,
moving at times, a little softening, a little drawing, a little help
in prayer, a little rising up of hope, and then it all goes,
and it dies down, and they wonder, well, was that really the Lord's
working, or was it not, and why has it all come to nothing? But
when we look upon it, as the Lord's visits, that then is very
encouraging. And when we think of how it was
with Samson, when we think of how it is in Isaiah, how he shall
teach them line upon line, here a little and there a little.
And one thing that's taught in that is our utter inability to
move our own hearts, to soften our own hearts, to draw ourselves. We need the Lord's power. We
need Him to work in us. Work out your own salvation with
fear and trembling, for it is God that worketh in you to will
and to do. It is the power of God that we
so need. We feel our own hard, lumpy,
stry heart to know that the Lord does visit His people. Remember,
with those in Egypt, He saw their groaning. and you saw their tears,
and their burdens, and their taskmasters, and you might feel
the same. Lord, does thou not see what
goes on in my heart, and the struggles, and the trials, and
the wrestlings, and the fears, and the doubts, and not knowing
which way to go? And yet when it's set before
us in the words of our text, and may the Lord apply it and
make it a word of real hope, God will surely visit you. It is a blessed word, and whether
individually or to church and people, if God speaks this in
your heart, remember what Joseph said, it came to pass. God will surely visit you. And actually, when he spoke that
to them, they were not yet. feeling in bondage, they are
not yet struggling, they are not yet labouring, they are not
yet under the heavy yoke of Egypt, but soon they would be. And then
that word would be more and more precious to them. God will surely
visit you. It is those in trial, distress
and trouble of soul and needing the Lord to appear that will
value this word. And you know, when the Lord began
to deliver the children of Israel, after nine signs and Egypt brought
down to nothing, they must have thought, what must be done to
make Pharaoh let us go? How ever can it be done? But
God knew how it would be done. You might be thinking that. How
ever can my soul be saved? How ever can I be changed? How
ever can I have something different than what I have? to visit his people and when
to visit them. So I leave the word with you
dear friends as a way, as an encouragement, and I trust a
word from the Lord, God will surely visit.